Home Is Not a Place
by sour gummies
Summary: Months after the Reach's defeat, events conspire to drive the former Runaways to the streets again under the leadership of a slipping Arsenal. Faced with new members, old enemies, and the difficulty of choosing right from wrong in a world where the good guys can't be trusted, the ragtag group must decide once and for all where their priorities—and their loyalties—truly lie. No OCs.
1. First Spark

a/n: I started this one as a fill for the anon meme at its new community, but then let it go for a while when it became apparent I wasn't getting any feedback. I think the story might be better received here, so I'll go ahead upload the chapters I've finished so far and see if the urge to continue writing strikes me along the way.

Let me know whatever you guys think!

* * *

After the Reach was defeated, they all thought, perhaps naively, that the nightmare was over. They were runaways, once: kids who slipped through the cracks or were pulled through, forced to suffer one injustice after another at the hands of people that only wanted to use them. Break them. Mistreat them. Like they didn't even have real feelings, thoughts that mattered.

Like they weren't human.

With the Reach finally gone, the world saved, they thought they had their chance to start over. Without the omnipresent specter of truth, inevitability, lurking beneath the worst of their nightmares, it was all too easy to believe that their lives were once again firmly in their own hands. That they alone controlled the courses of their own destinies. And, furthermore, that nothing would ever happen again to take that agency away from them. That they would never again have to fight for it, to steal themselves back from somebody else.

They all believed, at that point, that they had found safe places they could go back to. Places to call home. Where they'd finally, _finally_ belong, for real, after all the running had stopped.

They were wrong.

—

Surprisingly enough, Virgil Hawkins is the first of them to slip back through the cracks.

"I'm resigning," he mumbles disjointedly into the radio, aware of practically nothing besides his shaking hands on the comm, and the smell of smoke. "It's over. I'm done. I'm sorry."

Aqualad's voice is remarkably calm through the communicator. "_Static—Virgil. Please, tell us what's going on,_" he says. "_I do not know what has happened to you that provoked this decision, but I assure you there are other ways for us to solve whatever problem you are having. If you would just Zeta Beam to the Watchtower we could—_"

"No! I'm, I wont go," Virgil stammers, sinking slowly to his knees on the freezing ground. He folds his body in on itself as tightly as he can, rocking back and forth. "I can't, Aqualad. Please trust me on this. I can't go anywhere with you guys, not ever again, I'm not...I'm not _like_ you. Not a hero. I don't belong at the Watchtower."

"_You and I both know that is not true, Virgil,"_ Aqualad says calmly. "_Something traumatic has clearly occurred to make you talk like this. If you only would be patient for a little longer, I can ask Black Canary to—_"

"No. Th-There was a fire. A gang fight," Virgil hears himself saying in a jittery rush, cutting Kaldur off. "I thought I could do it, but—it w-wasn't. Nothing wasn't. God, I was so stupid to think I could be a hero in a place like this, or **anywhere**, so long as it's just one and I know too much about it...I think I shouldn't have tried to be both me and somebody else, if I was gonna go home and be with my family, too. Y'know?"

"_Calm yourself, Static. I do not understand. Tell me, was there a fire in your hometown? Or was it a gang fight?_"

"It's not that. It's what happened," Virgil says emphatically, trying to make him understand the gravity of the situation. "I just wanted to help. I didn't—if I hadn't been there, maybe some of them would have lived. I was just trying to help, but then I saw her inside, and it was like—all the others just completely disappeared."

He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he's being utterly incoherent. Virgil just can't get the stupid words to come out the way he wants them to, but that's all right, too. He's already said far more to Aqualad than he actually meant to.

"_Virgil—_"

"No, you listen! I saw her, and that was it, I had to, I had to get her out," Virgil says frantically, feeling a familiar panic bubble up inside him. "Whatever it took, I had to get her out of there. It didn't matter if any of the other gangbangers, or pedestrians, were—it was like I couldn't see them anymore, like they weren't even there. I didn't care what happened to anyone else in the plaza if it meant I could just save _her_. But, I couldn't. She didn't make it, and then I realized after all that what I had probably—maybe some of them would have lived. I'm sorry, Aqualad, but I-I can't be a member of the Team anymore. I have to go."

It's a long, tense moment before Kaldur says anything, and by that time, Virgil realizes he's about to start crying again. Kaldur's last, frantic plea comes through the comm, begging Static to stay exactly where he is, but Virgil's already turning off the radio.

He forces himself to stand. He zaps the communicator with a pulse of electricity to destroy it, dropping it to the ground without feeling. He doesn't want the Team to be able to trace him tonight.

Tears blur his vision. He tries to fight it, but it's no use: gasping sobs shake Virgil's entire frame for a long time, escaping his body out from his chest and through his throat. He struggles for several minutes to control it, to rein himself in, before he completely breaks. He hears voices screaming and sirens wailing somewhere out in the distance, but he only cringes and turns away from them when it registers. These aren't his people to protect anymore. Not after tonight.

It doesn't matter that he didn't start this, never intended to make it worse, whatever actually happened in those seconds he lost when he whited out. He understands now that he's too emotionally invested in the part of him that's still Virgil Hawkins, to operate as Static in any place he really cares about. One familiar, helpless face in a crowd will be enough to undo him completely, if he lets himself have a normal home and be a regular teenager like he really wants.

A jury wouldn't find enough evidence to convict him for what happened earlier, would send him home with a warning or possibly even their pity. But that doesn't mean it isn't still his fault. Virgil knows, in his heart, that it is. It has to be.

He has to leave.

Mechanically, he slings his backpack onto one shoulder and walks over to his filthy skateboard on the ground. Forcing himself to step up onto it, he begins riding slowly toward the edge of town. The soot-covered wheels leave black lines that trail behind him on the pavement, but Virgil doesn't notice them. The dirt on the wheels doesn't matter. They'll be clean again by the time he makes it to the next town over from Dakota City—or maybe the town after that.

Some lost, distant part of him, whatever part can still feel anything in this moment, hopes his father and sister will believe him to be just another casualty of the riots. He cannot face them now, after tonight. He can't go home again.

All that's left is to run, like before, until he stumbles across whatever comes next.


	2. Rising Wind

a/n: Wow, the response for this story so far has been incredible! This chapter is the last I've written so far, but if interest holds, I can certainly see myself continuing on.

I will say now that this chapter contains explicit mentions of **domestic abuse,** so you've been warned.

* * *

Tye didn't actually meant to hurt him. He didn't.

It doesn't matter.

—

Belatedly, it occurs to him that, for all that his mother's ex-con of a boyfriend is a horrible jerk with _no_ right to act the way he does, Maurice Bodaway is still only human.

He isn't a supervillain. Not an alien, not a robot. Maurice is human: no more or less mortal than the rest of them.

Tye wishes that the realization had hit him sooner, as he stands staring frozen down at the crumpled and broken form of the man who made so much of his life a living hell. If Maurice even survives the damage that Tye's astral form just did—and that's not looking to be a guarantee, sickening as the thought is—then the man's body will certainly never be the same.

Tye did this to him. Tye hurt him, _really_ hurt him. The fact that Asami would have probably done the same in his place feels completely irrelevant.

"No..." Tye mumbles lowly, shaking his head in disbelief and taking a step back. "No, Maurice...I didn't think I'd actually..."

The worst part is, Tye thinks he _might_ have actually been prepared to kill Maurice, over what he did to her. All he was able to think about, in the heat of the moment, was that Maurice had no right to attack Asami like that. After weeks upon weeks of his mother's boyfriend treating both Tye and Asami like garbage, something inside Tye had snapped. Life at his mother's house had been tolerable until Maurice got out of prison and came back to live at the Longshadow residence. After his stint in jail, Maurice seemed more determined than ever to make up for lost time tormenting his favorite punching bag, and the fact that Tye now had a girlfriend who spoke only in fractured English and Japanese seemed to actually make him more hateful than before.

But Tye has never actually wished Maurice _dead_ before today.

Cool, gentle hands wrap themselves around Tye's own. Startled, he turns away from the broken body on the carpet and finds himself met by a pair of guileless eyes, one brown and one green.

"Stop, Tye. _Dou demo ii,_" Asami says to him urgently, clearly seeking to interrupt his rising panic. She points to her throat, at the ugly ring of finger-shaped bruises Maurice left—evidence of what the man finally did to drive Tye to such a fury in the first place. "_Anata wa watashi no jinsei o sukutta,_ Tye Longshadow. Not your fault!"

"But, I really hurt him. I—oh man, I-I think I may have killed him, Asami," Tye says, the pitch of voice rising as his fear and nausea continues to build. He glances down at Maurice again, sees blood spreading slowly out from where the man is lying motionless on the carpet. "I can't believe I actually did that to him! I mean, I know I was _mad_, but I didn't think I was really that close to...to...I only wanted to make him stop hurting you, is all!"

Tye shuts up when Asami puts a finger to his lips, asking politely for his silence. She nods at him, and her expression grows frightened for the first time as she points silently toward the closed kitchen door behind them.

In the ensuing silence, Tye finally hears what his girlfriend's been trying to warn him about: his mother's frantic voice carries into the living room from beyond the door, speaking in hushed tones with an emergency responder on the other end of the line.

_"Please hurry,"_ he hears her say in muffled tones. _"I don't know what else he might be capable of, when he's like this."_

She's not talking about Maurice. She's talking about Tye—she's calling the police on _Tye_. She never once called anyone on Maurice, not when he was smacking Tye around for the fun of it, not when he threatened the "little foreign freak" who couldn't fight back. Not even when the guy was treating Shelly like a powerless agent to fulfill his demands, instead of an equal romantic partner.

But Tye's mother is calling the police now. On _him_. Calling an ambulance, Tye would understand; after all, Maurice is hurt and that's his fault, however much he may regret it now.

But instead, she called the police.

At that point, Tye realizes his girlfriend is right. They have to go right now. They have to get out of here before the first responders arrive. Because Tye can deal with being locked away in juvenile hall, he can go to prison like Maurice, but he absolutely _refuses_ to leave Asami alone in a place like this.

Tye only looks back once as Asami pulls him frantically toward the door, neither of them stopping to try and gather any of their shared belongings except their skateboards and a change of clothes. He tells himself, one last time, that he _didn't_ mean to hurt Maurice like this. He certainly didn't mean to hurt him to the point of almost killing him.

But he also didn't mean to let Maurice get away with it—harming the only person Tye's ever loved, who actually loved him back with all her heart. The one person who speaks more clearly and honestly to him than anyone Tye has ever known, even if it's not in perfect English. Asami cares for Tye with her entire being, doesn't make excuses, and he vows that, from now on, that's exactly what he's going to do for her. Not conditional. Not up to a point. Not the way his mother would, to protect a person like Maurice.

Tye knows his mom still loves him, there's no doubt in his mind. But it's not the kind of love he can depend on anymore.

If this is what it takes to keep Asami safe, then so be it. Tye will run away with her. He'll leave his mother and her road of good intentions behind, never come back to this sorry excuse of a home ever again. He'll follow Asami into the darkness of El Paso's streets without once looking back.

And he will not let himself worry along the way about their destination.

—

"What do you think?" he asks her, when they come to the very first fork in the road. The two of them are holding hands and running on foot for now, because the boards would make too much noise at this time of night.

Asami smiles back. "No idea."


End file.
